


Wooden Ships on the Water

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fishing, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 19:58:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4113064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Awesome daddy Stannis takes his little girl on a fishing trip, because that's what awesome daddies do.  An attempt at emotional healing for those of us traumatized by GoT, S5-09.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wooden Ships on the Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dr_Madwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Madwoman/gifts), [thebraveandthebroiled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebraveandthebroiled/gifts).



The morning was pale and streaky, the white sun creeping up through the trees and the sounds of the woods murmuring to life as Stannis and Shireen walked the path.  It was obscenely early but Shireen’s face was serene.  She’d been looking forward to this for weeks, almost more than he had.  An early riser just like he was, she didn’t seem the least bit bothered that it was before six in the morning.  For years, she’d wanted to go fishing with him, and now she was finally old enough.  They tromped through the woods, along the damp ground, toward the lake.  Shireen started singing softly as they walked: _“Wooden ships, on the water/very free and easy…”_

Stannis nearly dropped his tackle box.  “Why… are you singing that?”

Shireen smiled.  “Davos taught it to me.  He said I should learn it so you wouldn’t miss him.”

Stannis scowled for a moment, then gave a wry smile.   Davos, you jackass,  he thought.  For reasons that he couldn’t explain, every time he and Davos went fishing, his deputy mayor felt compelled to sing that Crosby, Stills & Nash song that absolutely chafed Stannis’s ass.  He couldn’t help it.  It was reflex.  Stannis had given up trying to get him to stop, and Davos had given up trying to get Stannis to stop grumbling about it as they would sit in their boat with their lines in the water.

And now Shireen was taking up the mantle.  Stannis shook his head.

“So what kind of bait is in that bucket?” she asked, peering at the big white pail they’d picked up at the bait shack.  

“Golden shiners.”

She circled around behind him to get closer to the bucket.  “They don’t look golden.”

“It’s just what they call them.”

She plunged her hand into the bucket of cold water and grabbed at one of them, watching it wriggle in her hand and then slip out, and back into the water with a splash.  She giggled.  Stannis couldn’t help but feel proud.  Before Robert died, he once made the mistake of saying to Stannis that it was too bad he only had a girl and couldn’t bring her on fishing trips.  After Stannis kicked his fat ass out of the boat and into the water, Robert never said anything about that again.  But Stannis couldn’t help feeling proud at the fact that Robert’s little brat Joffrey had been ten times as squeamish his first time handling live bait as his Shireen was just now.  He would have said that Joffrey shrieked like a little girl, except that Shireen was Stannis’s reference for little girls, and she was as even-tempered, iron-backed and whip-smart as he was.

They walked out to the edge of the rough wooden dock where their rowboat sat waiting for them.  Stannis rowed them out onto the lake, Shireen sitting in front of him with her hands over his, “helping.”  Once they found a spot he liked, he walked her through the basics of properly tying a lure and baiting a hook.

Watching the way she hooked the shiner onto her line, watching the way she followed his example carefully when casting her line, he knew she every bit his little girl.  She was going to follow in his footsteps and at least become mayor like he was, if not run for state assembly or Congress.  At ten years old, she’d already gotten up and spoken in front of town hall meetings about education issues at the elementary school level.  

“I’ll bet you five dollars I catch a sunfish before you do,” she said to him, angling and nodding her pole to bob the bait and lure around under the water, just as he was doing.

He smirked at her.  “But what’ll you do if you lose?  You haven’t got five dollars.”

“You can take it out in trade,” she said after a few minutes.

“Trade!  I see.  And what’ve you got to trade?  I don’t need any American Girl dolls, not even the one who looks like Eleanor Roosevelt.”

“I’ll run a town hall meeting for you,” she decided.

Stannis harumphed and opened their pack.  Inside was a thermos of juice and two pork roll sandwiches; he handed one to Shireen, and they sat with their lines in the water, eating in silence for a few minutes.  

“Alright,” he agreed after finishing his sandwich.  “You can run a town hall meeting for me.  But no swearing, ok?”

“Daddy, goddamn doesn’t count as a swear.”

“Yes it does.”

“Then how come I’m allowed to wear this shirt?”

They were wearing matching shirts that Davos had had made specially for them after Shireen’s impressive performance in front of the town hall.  She had actually spoken incredibly well but one of the town council members couldn’t resist condescending to her, and no Baratheon had it in their DNA to tolerate that.  “That’s not my goddamn point,” she’d said to him in frustration.

Stannis was mildly embarrassed, but a part of him was pleased with her for standing up to an adult.  Especially that smarmy dipshit, Greyjoy.  He grumbled about it to Davos for days, in that way that Davos knew meant that he was secretly proud.  So Davos, being Davos, bought them matching t-shirts with the Baratheon family crest on it, and the words, “Ours is the Goddamn Fury.”  Shireen wore hers to school -- an unusual choice for a ten year old girl--  but since Stannis was the mayor, nobody wanted to call him and raise a stink about it.

“Because it was a present from Davos.”

“So swear words are ok if they’re on presents?”

“You’re going to be a lawyer, aren’t you?” he grumbled.

“ You’re a lawyer.”

Stannis ruffled her hair.  “Stop talking, Shireen, you’re going to scare the fish away.”

She gave him a wise little smile. 

A moment later, she felt a tug on her line.  She sat up.  “Daddy!  Daddy, look!  What do I do?”

Stannis set his pole down, bracing it with the tackle box, and leaned over to help his daughter.  “You reel it in, ok?”  He placed her hand on the spool and got her going, and she was turning the reel, both of them watching the line shudder in the water and the end of the rod bowing down.  After a few minutes of turning, she yanked the pole so hard that the end of her line broke from the water and a shiny fish went flying up, arcing over her head and almost landing in the water on the other side of her.  

A small, green-gold sunfish, a little bigger that her hand, flopped about on the floor of their little rowboat.

He patted her on the back.  “Good!  Now when your friends ask, how big was it?”

She held her hands up, approximating the size of the fish.  He shook his head, reached out and pulled them about twice as far apart.  She grinned.  He showed her how to get it off the hook and then tossed into the second bucket they’d brought.  Then she baited her hook again and tossed it into the water.

“So what do you think?” he asked as they sat on the water, watching the sun continue to climb in the cloudy sky.  “Do you like fishing?”

She nodded.  

“Can we bring Davos next time?”

“Of course.”

She put her feet up on the edge of the boat, and started to sing:   “If you smile at me, I will understand / 'Cause that is something everybody everywhere does / In the same language…”

“Knock it off,” Stannis admonished her.

“But don’t you miss Davos?”

“Yes.  But I don’t miss his singing.”

Shireen smiled and reassured him that she was a much better singer than Davos.

 

“Wooden ships on the water, very free and easy / Easy, you know the way it's supposed to be / Silver people on the shoreline, let us be / Talkin' 'bout very free and easy…”

  
  



End file.
